A House Built on Secrets
by SigmaTheta
Summary: Collection of short fics/snippets/etc. written in response to various prompts, all centering around Billie, Daud, Billie & Daud, or Billie/Daud.
1. The Five Senses: Billie

(300 words.)

* * *

Everything was a little sharper with the Void running through her body, and that was something that had its ups and downs.

It certainly made it much easier to do her work. She could hear a Watch patrol approaching from three streets away and be clear of the area before they even knew to look for her. Her aim was better than it had ever been, good enough to shoot a rat dead in the gutters below from her perch high up on the rooftops, even if her companions grumbled at her for showing off and wasting ammunition.

She could have done without the sense of smell, though. In time, she got used to the constant copper tang of blood that now clung to her, but Dunwall reeked on the best of days, and when the rains came and flooded the sewers or the winds shifted to drag across the rotting whale carcasses of Slaughterhouse Row, she could hardly walk the streets without retching.

But the tastes alone made even that worth it.

She had money, now, more than she had ever seen before in her life. She would go out into the city and kill a man, feel hot blood splatter across her skin, hear his last gurgling breath as he died, and then Daud would count out coins, clinking musically into her red-stained palms. She would take her share of the bounty to the markets and buy herself sweet, sticky apricot tarts, fresh fruits and meats, warm, buttery bread rolls, relishing in everything that had once been beyond her reach.

Not so long ago, she had considered it a blessing to find half a tin of potted whale meat thrown away with the trash. She could tolerate any amount of unpleasant sensations to never be that desperate again.


	2. Lateness: BillieDaud

(400 words.)

* * *

"Job went fine last night, but the Overseers are starting to sniff around a little too close to home. They had those damn music boxes, and Rinaldo almost got cornered just outside. Might be time to start looking for a new place to set up our base."

Daud sighed as he continued to work on his weapons. "We knew this was coming. It's never good for us to stay in one place for so long. Anything else to report?"

"I think I might be pregnant."

There was a harsh scraping noise as the knife Daud was sharpening skidded off the edge of the whetstone. He looked up sharply to meet Billie's steady, carefully blank stare. "That's a problem," he said slowly.

The corner of her mouth twitched. "No shit."

"You're sure?"

She shrugged. "Pretty sure. Been feeling sick to my stomach lately, and I haven't bled for a few months."

"A few?"

Another shrug. "I don't always. I don't know if it's the Void or just all the running around we do, but I've still never gone this long before."

He carefully set the knife down and leaned back in his chair. He scratched his chin for a moment in thought. "I assume you want to…" He trailed off, shook his head. "What do you want to do?"

"I want to end it before it starts getting in the way of our work," she said bluntly. "I'm only telling you because I'm hoping you have an idea where to start. You know more about Dunwall's back alley businesses than I do."

"I know enough to avoid most of them." He dropped his hand to the table and tapped his fingers as he considered the situation. "The apothecary who sells us our poisons can probably mix up something. I'll pay him a visit tonight."

"You don't have to. Just tell me where to find him."

Daud shook his head. "He fancies himself a conman, and he doesn't know to be afraid of you, yet. I don't doubt you can get what you need out of him, but he'll try to give you the runaround. He already knows not to waste my time."

Billie frowned but eventually gave a short nod. "All right," she said. "Thank you."

"I believe half the responsibility is mine, anyway."

She hesitated, then shrugged again. "You're the only candidate with the right parts."

"I thought as much."


	3. Undressing: Billie and Daud

(208 words. Death of the Outsider trailer-related.)

* * *

Daud stumbles on his way through the safe house door, and Billie's eyebrows shoot up.

"They rough you up that much before tying you to that chair?" she asks, reaching out to try and steady him.

He steps away before she can touch him. "I'm fine," he says, waving her off, but the motion pulls at something, and he grimaces and presses his hand to his side halfway through.

Billie frowns and crosses her arms. "All right, take the coat off and let me see the damage."

He stares at her and makes no move to do so.

Billie holds out her right hand, concentrating until the blade forms itself in her grip. She gestures with it pointedly. "I'm not afraid to cut it off of you, old man."

He holds her gaze steadily for a few moments longer, then relents with a shake of his head. He mutters something under his breath as he unbuttons his coat, mostly too low for her to hear, though she's fairly sure she hears the words _'stubborn witch'_ come out near the end.

Billie lets herself smile. "Had to be to keep up with you." She gestures again with the knife. "Shirt, too. I can already see you're bleeding through that."


	4. Second Chances: Billie and Daud

(425 words.)

* * *

Daud had once considered Billie Lurk to be one of his greatest accomplishments, had taken great pride in her abilities, in every clean cut of her blade as though he held the weapon himself. Even after she had betrayed him, he couldn't help but admire the attempt. It was something he might have done, in another time and place, and he had taught her well.

He looks at her now, scarred and weary and older than he was when they first met, still just as deadly with a sword in her hand, and he is no longer sure he should be proud of what he's done.

She was young when he brought her into the Whalers. Not the youngest he'd ever trained and certainly no longer a child, in either age or attitude, but still quite young, with talents that she could have put to many other uses in her life. She could have done anything; instead, she is here now, in a rundown shack in a dusty Karnaca slum, helping an old man pull off one last job, an almost certain suicide mission, just so he could die feeling like he did one damn thing in his life that was worthwhile.

"Have you ever hated me for turning you into a killer?"

Billie looks up at him, eyebrow raised, half a smile on her face like she thinks he might be making a joke. "I was already a killer. You just made me a better one."

"That doesn't answer my question."

She lets out a sigh as the smile fades, and she tips her head back, staring up at the ceiling. "No," she says eventually. "I'd have been dead without you, starved or hunted down in the streets. Maybe some would say that's better, if I'd died then instead of living to do what I did, but I don't agree with that. I regret a lot from that time, but I never hated you for any of it. I've done good work since then. I'm grateful that I was alive for it."

Daud looks at her for a moment, then nods slowly. "I see," he says.

She shakes her head and kicks him lightly under the table. "Come on, old man," she says, pulling her maps and reconnaissance notes closer, "we've got work to do."

He nods again, sitting up straighter and tucking his leg under his chair and out of her reach. He could do nothing about the past, but they were both still here, and right now they had something worth doing.


	5. HurtComfort: Billie and Daud

(585 words.)

* * *

"It's not that bad. You'll be fine."

Billie sucked in a sharp, hissing breath as he adjusted the makeshift bandage and put more pressure on the wound. "You know," she said through a grimace, "for a career criminal, you're a fucking terrible liar."

"I don't usually spend much time talking to my targets. If you were trying to have a conversation, that may be why you got stabbed."

"You're such an asshole."

"So you've told me. Now stop moving." Daud glanced up toward the Whaler standing across from him at Billie's other side and asked, "Do you have what you need?"

Marco, who had steady hands and once spent a few months working as a physician's assistant, therefore making him the closest thing they had to an actual surgeon, picked up his curved needle and nodded. "Do it."

Daud reached down to grab the half-empty bottle of Dunwall Whiskey on the floor beside the bed and lifted it into view.

Billie's eyes went slightly wide. "You serious?" she muttered.

"It'll sting like hell, but it's probably still better than dying."

" _Probably?_ "

"That's all I can promise."

She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the mattress. "I'll cut your throat while you sleep," she threatened weakly.

"I don't think you'll be doing anything for the next few days, so I'll take my chances." He shifted his grip on the neck of the bottle. "Are you ready?"

"No," she said, but her fingers scrabbled along his side until she had a handful of his shirt gathered up in her clenched fist. She gritted her teeth and gave a short nod.

Daud nodded back. He quickly removed the now blood-soaked cloth, put an arm across her chest, and leaned his weight on it to hold her down. Then he tipped the bottle and poured the whiskey over the wound.

She managed not to thrash too much, through both the cleaning and the stitching, but her cries of pain were worse than he expected. Billie wasn't much of a complainer, and he'd seen her walk away from dozens of lesser injuries without a word. It was unsettling to see her in such obvious and extreme distress. By the time Marco finished his work, she was barely clinging to consciousness, her eyes open but unfocused and her fingers still curled weakly around the end of his shirt.

"You'll be fine," Daud said again, quieter this time. He brushed his hand over her forehead, pushing away the sweat-soaked strands of hair clinging to her skin. After a moment, Billie's eyes drifted shut.

He watched for a while to ensure she was still breathing, then straightened up and turned toward Marco.

The other Whaler was looking studiously down and away, cleaning and organizing his tools in silence.

"Will she live?" Daud asked bluntly.

Marco swallowed nervously before answering. "That's up to her now. I did all I could with what we have. We just have to hope the wound doesn't get infected, or if it does, that she's strong enough to fight it off."

Daud frowned and said nothing.

Marco cleared his throat. "Lurk's as stubborn as an ox, sir," he offered. "If anyone can pull through that kind of damage, it's her."

"She is," Daud agreed. He reached down and unhooked Billie's fingers from his shirt. He let her hand rest in his for a moment before laying it down across her chest. "You can go back to your patrol. I'll summon you if anything changes here."


	6. Waking Up: BillieDaud

(730 words. Post-Death of the Outsider, but written before its release.)

* * *

Billie woke suddenly with another sharp pain at her right temple, and she quickly bit her tongue to keep from crying out. When it dulled down to an ache, consistent but manageable, she carefully sat up, moving slowly and quietly, and pressed the heel of her hand hard against her forehead.

She needn't have bothered trying to be silent. Beside her, Daud's tired voice said, "What is it?"

Neither of them were very heavy sleepers, given the lives they had led. It was a wonder they could even manage to spend a night in the same bed.

Billie shook her head, wincing. "Nothing," she mumbled. "Damn thing is aching again, that's all."

The shards of the Void that had attached themselves to the stump of her arm had gone away easily enough when the job was done and the artifact destroyed, but the Eye of the Dead God was something else entirely and not so easily removed. The headaches plagued her every few days, with sudden, searing pain and a red haze over her vision.

Daud sat up, rubbing a hand over his face. "Bad?" he asked.

She considered lying, but there was as little point in that as in trying not to wake him in the first place. "Pretty bad."

With a wordless sound of acknowledgment, Daud shifted to the edge of the bed and stood up.

"You don't need to do that," Billie said. "I can get it myself."

He waved a hand at her dismissively. "No, stay."

"I'm not going to pass out and fall again."

"I didn't say you would."

She frowned but gave up the argument, watching as he made his way to the stove in the corner that was heating the room. He walked with a limp now, some days worse than others, and there was a cane against the wall near the bed that he was too stubborn to use on all but his worst days. She supposed that was a trait they both shared.

The Eye throbbed again, and Billie pressed harder with her hand and closed her own eye. She could still see faint, red outlines of Daud's movement in the dark, remnants of the borrowed power that came back with the pain and that she did her best to block out. She focused instead on the sounds: slow footsteps, running water, and the scrape of the kettle against the stove.

Before long, the room was filled with the scents of spices, a much more pleasant distraction. She opened her eye again to see Daud emptying a small packet of powder into a steaming mug. The medicine Dr. Hypatia had given Billie for the pain was horribly bitter stuff, but it thankfully went down much easier with the flavorful food and drink Serkonos was so well known for.

He walked back over to hand her the mug and sat down and watched while she drank the medicine down. "I can go to Hypatia's office and tell her you needed to stay home," he said as she finished.

Billie shook her head. "No, this stuff works fast. I'll be fine in a little while." She smirked. "Anyway, I think she's still a little afraid of you. Wouldn't be nice of me to spring you on her without a warning."

He snorted. "She knows what we are. If she's afraid of me, she should be afraid of you."

"Your face was on more wanted posters than mine," she said with a shrug. "And I let her hide out on my ship for a while. All you've ever done is stand in the corner of her office and scowl."

"I don't like that building."

"You don't always need to come with me."

He said nothing to that, just held out his hand for the empty mug. Then he stood up again. "Go back to sleep if you're set on working today," he said. "The sun's not even up yet."

Billie smiled, a bit sadly, at his back as walked away again. The Addermire Institute certainly had a strangeness to it, but she doubted if that was really what bothered him. Dr. Hypatia was the best around, and even she couldn't do more than manage the pain caused by the Eye.

So many brushes with death over the years, and this was going to be the thing that killed her. Daud would outlive his apprentice.


	7. Hooker AU: BillieDaud

(300 words.)

* * *

"Haven't seen you before," she says, with a calculated tilt of the head that lets her hair cascade appealingly over her shoulder. "New in town?"

Daud almost laughs. Strange the places his reputation does not follow him. "No, I've been here for some time."

"Just new to the Cat, then?" she asks, moving closer. Her hands go to his chest, lips curling into a smile. "I'll try to make a good first impression."

She really is quite beautiful, with a confident, aggressive charm that he is sure appeals to many. He can see why the Madame would have been willing to take on the risks of her past when desperation finally drove her here. She must turn quite a profit, despite the many scars hidden beneath her makeup. Most men wouldn't know to look for that.

Daud had seen her drive a knife through a nobleman's thigh in the alley behind the Golden Cat, after she'd pulled him off one of the younger girls and shoved him out the door before any of the guards even had a chance to react. She'd wiped the blood from her hands like it was nothing.

"I have a proposition for you," he says.

She laughs low in her throat and lets her hands slip downward. "I should hope so."

Unexpectedly, his breath catches for a moment, and he swallows hard before speaking again. "Another proposition," he corrects.

She tilts her head, less calculated this time. "Interesting," she says. "Is this a paying proposition?"

"If I'm right about you, it will pay very well."

The woman once known on her wanted posters as Billie Lurk laughs darkly. She leans in to kiss him, slowly and deeply. "Well, Daud," she says as she pulls away, smirking as his eyebrows lift in subtle surprise, "I'm listening."


	8. Werewolf AU: Whalers, Billie and Daud

(100 words each. Related but not directly sequential.)

* * *

They say that wolves haunt the streets of Dunwall, and by day they wear the faces of men.

Heretic's talk, of course.

The wealthy and powerful know that anything can be bought in this city, even life and death. They seek the killers in their dens and swallow back their old, primal fears. Because the stories are just that, and it's silly to believe in tall tales past childhood.

Sometimes the job is done cleanly, with poison or a blade slid neatly through the heart.

Sometimes, on the nights around the brightest moon, men die with their throats torn out.

* * *

Billie came to him with death in her eyes and blood in her teeth.

Sometimes he thinks she must have been born like that, a wolf long before he turned her.

He taught her to hunt with blade and fang, sank his teeth into her flesh when the moon swelled and watched the change rush through her. She took to it better than most, and even now he can't help but admire her mastery of it.

Even now, as Billie stands over Whaler corpses and snarls her challenge at him. There is death in her eyes, blood in her teeth.


	9. Survival: Billie - Hooker AU

(750 words. Background for Hooker AU.)

* * *

Two months of running and fighting and surviving, and she gets caught for trying to steal half-rotted food from a damned brothel.

The guard drags Billie up a flight of stairs to the Madame's office and pushes her inside, closing the door without a word. The office is quite plain compared to the gleaming excess of the rest of the Golden Cat, and the Madame doesn't stand out much either – an older woman with greying hair dressed in neat but simple clothing. She regards Billie with a cool, critical eye from her place behind her desk and says, "So, you're the one who's got the Grand Guard swarming all over my city."

Billie tenses up immediately. She'd hoped there was a chance she might go unrecognized, get out of this with just a scolding if she kept her head down and looked contrite and desperate enough. As though she would ever be that lucky. Her eyes begin to dart around the room, searching for any chance of escape.

The Madame waves a hand at her. "Relax, dear. I've no intention of handing you over to that lot. They're rowdy and messy and rude to my girls, and I refuse to lift a finger to help them do their job." She laces her fingers together on the desk in front of her and tilts her head curiously. "Tell me, though, are you truly a killer like they say?"

Anger burns through Billie's caution. "I killed one man who deserved to die," she snaps. "If that's enough to call me a killer, then yeah. I'm a killer like they say."

The Madame considers Billie for a long moment, her expression unchanging, until Billie begins to fidget and eye the doors and windows again. Eventually, she lets out a quiet sigh and nods. "Yes, I'm afraid I can believe that. The Duke has always seemed decent enough, as far as royalty goes, but those sons of his… It was only a matter of time before one of them pissed off somebody who didn't care about his title." She shakes her head and waves a hand to beckon Billie over. "Come here, girl, and let me get a better look at you."

Billie does so, warily drawing closer and stopping just in front of the desk.

The Madame stands and reaches out, placing her fingertips delicately under Billie's chin and tilting her head this way and that. "Hm, lovely with a bit of work, I'm sure," she mutters to herself. She pulls her hand away after a moment and crosses her arms. "Unfortunately, the portrait on your wanted poster is a fair likeness, but I believe I could do something about that. Feed you up, change your hair, cover some of the scars – anyone truly looking wouldn't be fooled, but the Guard won't expect a street rat to achieve such a drastic change in appearance. You could manage to get by."

Billie takes a step back and narrows her eyes suspiciously. "And what would you want out of me?"

"You would need to work here, and I assume you know what kind of work that is." When Billie immediately begins to shake her head and back away, the Madame holds up a hand to halt her. "This is simply an offer. I don't like the idea of throwing you back out there to the hounds, but I can't be hiding a wanted criminal or taking coin out of my girls' pay to help you escape. You're free to leave now, and I won't raise any alarms, but I urge you to consider staying. You've been running a long time, and you've done impressively well, but I doubt if your luck will hold much longer."

Billie hesitates. She's spent so long trying to avoid this, fighting and stealing from the moment she left her mother rotting at home, trying to find any other way to survive. But the Madame is right. What little luck Billie still has isn't going to last. Someone will eventually get the best of her, either a Guardsman with a good shot or some other desperate street kid willing to sell her out. Hunger gnaws constantly at Billie's insides and despair clouds her mind at night, but she is still not quite ready to give up her life to the inevitable.

It's not the worst it could be. It's not a filthy mattress thrown down in a back alley.

She swallows hard, meets the Madame's eye, and gives a short nod.


	10. Ghost Hunting AU: Billie and Daud

(500 words. Prompt based off this post: allofthefeelings . tumblr post/131680478195/i-just-had-the-worlds-most-amazing-fandom-dream)

* * *

Billie climbed through the attic window first and shuddered as soon as she was beyond the threshold. "Definitely a few in here," she said, her lip curling with distaste. "These old buildings always draw them in. We're clear for now, though."

Daud nodded and followed her in. He slipped a hand under his coat to make sure the scythe was folded and strapped to his hip alongside the more conventional weapons. "Let's hope none of them are in an interfering mood. This will be a difficult enough job as it is."

"I wouldn't get too hopeful," she said with a scowl as another shudder passed through her body.

Most of his Whalers were hunters if they were anything. Billie's particular gift was as rare as it was valuable, but she did not much care for it. Killing had always been more her style, and he knew her fingers still itched to swing the scythe herself instead of luring spirits in with soothing talk and telling Daud where to aim his blows.

The scythe was forged from deep black pieces of Void and would tear apart anyone not meant to wield it. He had let her touch it once, shortly after its construction, to prove the point. The burns on her hands had taken weeks to fully heal, and she had not asked again.

He hoped she had learned to content herself instead with how invaluable her talent made her to him. Her ruthlessness and skill with the blade had made her a Whaler, but it was her rare gift that kept her at his side for every hit.

Angry spirits were a common danger when you made your living killing for coin.

They crept their way through the dark attic and down the narrow servants' stairs on their way to their target's rooms. Halfway down the corridor, Billie suddenly stopped dead, her shoulders tense and drawn as she stared at the empty space in front of her.

Daud moved his hand from the grip of his whaling blade to the handle of the scythe and took a step closer to Billie's side. "A threat?" he asked in an undertone.

She jerked slightly at the sound of his voice, then quickly shook her head. "No, I don't think so," she answered, matching his low volume. "Dead serving girl, young, bruises around the neck. She feels new." Billie's hand went to her own throat unconsciously, and she grimaced. "I guess the master lost his temper. No wonder someone wants him killed."

Daud kept his hand on the scythe. "Do we need to do anything about her?" he asked.

Billie hesitated, biting her lip and drumming her fingers against her own blade, but she eventually shook her head. "No, she won't be any trouble, and I know we don't have the time for a mercy swing," she said with a sigh. "Let's just kill this bastard and collect our coin. I don't want to be here any longer than we have to be."


	11. Hooker AU 2: BillieDaud

(1068 words.

This chapter rated M.)

* * *

"This isn't what I came here for," Daud says, though the protest probably loses something from the way his hands go automatically to Billie's hips as she settles herself on his lap.

Billie shrugs. "But it is what you paid for, and I don't like owing people. You never know when or how they're going to try to collect." She tilts her head and smirks. "Besides, I'm curious what dirty little things the infamous Knife of Dunwall likes."

Daud has had more than a few jealous wives and husbands hire him for killings at the Golden Cat, and the jobs often involved more details than he really needed to know. "Compared to your regular clients, I'm sure you'll find me boring."

She laughs, dipping her head to press her mouth against his neck. "That might be a nice change of pace," she murmurs against his throat. Her hands slip from his shoulders and begin to work at the buttons of his shirt, moving methodically downward. She stops when she reaches his belt, letting her fingertips trail teasingly over the newly exposed skin just above. "You said you had a proposition for me?"

Daud closes his eyes and breathes deeply. "Yes," he says, tightening his grip on her waist. Her undergarments are edged in lace, and he runs his fingers roughly along that delicate fabric. "I think you'd do better killing for me than continuing the work you do here."

She lifts her head to frown at him, and he can feel a quiver of tension in her fingertips. "That's a pretty different set of skills," she says to him. "What makes you think I'd be any good at what you do?"

"Because I know who you are." He presses one hand flat to her stomach, then slips it down beneath the lace. "Three years ago, the Grand Guard swarmed through Dunwall looking for a murderer, some mad street rat who had killed the duke's son, but they never managed to track her down." He grazes over the wet heat between her thighs, and she inhales sharply, fingernails digging into his hips. "She was clever enough to evade them for a while, and then she found a place to hide in plain sight. She changed her look, changed her name – what is it you're calling yourself now? Meagan, was it? A much more common name than Billie Lurk."

Her nails dig into his skin again, hard enough to come off like a warning, before she shifts and moves her hands back up to his shoulders. She rocks her hips forward, rubbing herself against the heel of his palm. "You know an awful lot," she says, letting one hand slip back behind his neck.

Daud can hear the soft scrape of metal on wood by his ear, but Billie's arm does not move again. He nods. "I know a great deal," he says softly, leaning in like he's passing on a secret. He shifts his hand, and his fingers slide inside her easily, slick and ready; the knuckle of his thumb presses hard against her clit. Billie's eyes flutter briefly shut, and he enjoys the quiet noise that escapes her lips. "I know you spend your days serving clients you loathe," he continues, fingers curling within her. "You swallow down your hate while you charm Dunwall's wealthiest men and women, then dream of killing them like you did the duke's son, wishing you could get away with it again."

Billie's breath is hot and shallow against his throat, and her expression is mingled arousal and wariness. It's more appealing to him than he would be willing to admit aloud. Her arm by his head suddenly tenses, and he reaches up quickly with his free hand to grab her wrist and pull it into view. She tightens her fingers around the handle of the short blade in her grip – a poorly made, decorative thing, but it would do the job against a less skilled opponent – and her dark eyes widen.

"If I had come here meaning to kill you," Daud says, sliding his hand up and overtop of hers, "I would already be collecting payment for your corpse."

Billie shudders and slowly loosens her grip on the blade, letting Daud slip it from her fingers. "Then what do you want from me?"

Daud trails the knife lightly down her body as he lets his hand come to rest at her thigh. The blade's point settles just below the curve of her hip. "What I've already told you: I want you as one of my assassins." He flexes the fingers of his other hand, drawing another sharp gasp from her lips. "I'll train you to do it right, to kill quick and clean or slow and lingering, and the Watch will never come close to finding you."

She rolls her hips, letting the tip of the blade press into her skin, drawing a bead of blood, and forcing Daud's fingers deeper inside her. "And what do I get from this?" she asks, a little breathless, tightening her hands on his shoulders to brace herself as she moves. "A cut of the pay? I already earn enough coin to get by without putting myself back on all the city's wanted posters."

"I know it's not the coin that interests you. We get paid to take down the rich and powerful that nobody else can touch. You fight for me, and you'll be killing people like the ones who've hurt you." He presses his thumb back to her clit, rubbing small, swift circles in time with the rocking of her hips. Her head tips back, eyes half-lidded, lips parted, and he leans in closer, voice rumbling in her ear as he promises, "You'll have your payment in blood."

Billie lets out a low groan, bucks her hips roughly forward, and then she is clenching and shuddering around his hand. Her nails dig sharply into his arms for a moment, and then the tension slips from her body. She lets her head fall to rest on his shoulder, breathing heavily against his neck.

"Teach me to do what you do," she says eventually, her lips moving against his skin, "and I'll slit the throat of every damned noble in the city if you want."

Daud smiles, satisfied. He slowly pulls his hand from her, trailing wet fingertips over her stomach. "Then we have a deal."


	12. Time Loops: Billie

(100 words. Spoilers for Death of the Outsider.)

* * *

Time still splinters around her.

In the streets, she sees portraits of Empresses shifting, bloodflies and dust storms fading in and out of view.

Sometimes she wakes in the night hearing Deirdre's sweet laugh, Daud's low voice asking for her help. She's seen their deaths a dozen times each by now.

The Outsider, sitting at her table in patched and shabby clothes, picking unenthusiastically at a tin of potted meat, regards her with a curious tilt of the head. "Did you think everything would be so simple?" he asks, boy and god all at once.

Behind him, the Void flickers.


	13. Pets: Daud

(294 words.)

* * *

There was a wolfhound staring at Daud while he ate, sitting across the fire from him with its mouth hanging open and its tongue lolling out the side. He did his best to ignore it, focusing on the finicky task of picking out the edible bits of meat from between tiny rat bones.

One of his men had brought a couple of the beasts home a few months back, promising that with a little training they would forget their old commands and come to serve as excellent guards for the Whaler base. He was an Abbey run away and claimed to have been good with the creatures before he left.

Daud had been skeptical. "You're responsible for keeping them fed and making sure they don't attack any of us," he'd said, "and if it goes wrong, you're the one putting them down."

There were times when he felt more like the father to a few dozen unruly children instead of the leader of a band of highly skilled assassins.

But the wolfhounds had more than proved their worth since then. They were quick to learn to recognize the familiar scents of all the Whalers and now regularly tracked down and dispatched intruders before anyone on sentry duty had even raised an alarm. They were valuable assets.

The one in front of him now lay down and put its head on its paws. It inhaled deeply and let out a long, low whine.

With a sigh, Daud gave up on the rat meat and tossed the rest of his skewer to the beast, which quickly snapped it out of the air and began crunching away at what was left. "I suppose you've earned your cut," he muttered.

The hound's tail thumped happily against the ground.


	14. Role Swap: Billie and Daud

(218 words.)

* * *

"This is usually when people run or beg for their life."

The boy's eyes flick upward briefly, looking to the roofs where Billie knows several of her Whalers are stationed. "I don't think it would do much good," he says, calmer than she would have expected.

He's got a Serkonan look about him, and when he speaks, there's enough of an accent to make her think he hasn't been in Dunwall for all that long. The nasty scar running down the side of his face, just barely missing the eye, doesn't look very old either. Billie wonders just what kind of trouble he's been running from and how much of it followed him here.

Still, he's good for an untrained street kid. He stuck to the shadows and kept his footing even on rain-slick roof tiles as he followed her. If she hadn't been at this so long, she might not have ever noticed him. If he could learn what she has to teach…

She leans forward to meet his eye. There's a familiar anger there, a rage against the world that's wronged him that she understands all too well. "Come fight and kill for me," she says, "and you'll be the one they're begging for mercy."

The boy is nodding before she's even finished saying the words.


	15. Costumes: BillieDaud

(846 words.)

* * *

"How does it look?"

Daud walks a quick half-circle around Billie, looking for any obvious flaws that might give away the deception. He finds nothing. She looks finer now than any true highborn lady he's ever seen. To her question, he simply says, "It should do."

She snorts. "It better. Took me most of an hour to get into all of this."

"Will you be able to fight well enough if something goes wrong?"

"Yeah, the skirts actually give a lot of room to move. Might have to tie it up a little higher, though, if it comes to that."

Daud's eyes flick downward before he can stop himself, lingering on the place where the loose fabric sways around her bare legs. Skirts and gowns have been out of fashion for decades now, and it's rare to see them outside of fancy dress parties like the one the Boyles are holding tonight. It's even stranger to see such a thing on his second-in-command, who hardly even takes her whaling mask off if she can avoid it. She'll blend in well pursuing their target this evening.

He lifts his chin with a jerk to meet her eye again. "You're armed?" he asks.

A smirk plays at the corner of her mouth. "You want to check?"

He looks her up and down again, slow and considering. "How many?" he asks, taking a step closer.

"Three blades," she says, uncrossing her arms and squaring her shoulders with her feet in an easy, open stance, "and a few other things."

"That's not much for you."

"Should make it easy, then."

He snorts and takes another step closer, accepting the beginning of this game. He starts with the most obvious one, putting his hand just above the curve of her hip and sliding it around to her back. The dress is cinched around the middle with a thick band of fabric tied in an elaborate bow, and it covers enough space to easily conceal even a decent sized weapon. He slips his fingers up under the soft fabric and quickly finds the dagger sheathed there, resting flat across the small of her back. A flick of his thumb at the handle brings the blade out an inch or so, and he nods, satisfied that the knife is still accessible from its hiding place.

Billie laughs quietly, something he feels beneath his hands more than he hears. "Finding that one hardly even counts," she says.

"Give me time," he murmurs in reply. He pushes the blade back into its sheath and pulls his hand from beneath the band of fabric. He reaches up to press his fingers along the back of the gown, where the lacing draws it all together, but he feels nothing disrupting the smooth planes of her back and shoulders underneath. With a shake of his head, he takes a half-step back and drops into a crouch before her.

The boots she is wearing don't quite fit with the rest of the costume, but they are still much less thick and sturdy than the Whalers' usual standard. They don't go very far up her calves, but there is still enough room to conceal certain, smaller blades. Daud puts a hand around each ankle, pressing lightly up the sides of each boot. The left gives completely, but the right has a hard line of resistance along the outer edge. He slides the knife out carefully – a short, wedged blade best suited to being thrown rather than any sort of close combat – and when he pushes it back down, he finds the butt of the knife sits just below the edge of the boot, easily spotted if one were looking.

"Be careful no one sees this one," he cautions her, and she immediately scoffs above him, dismissive of such a basic warning at her level of skill.

One more blade left and really only one more place to adequately hide it.

From here he stands up slowly, letting his hands slide along the backs of her calves, then pushing the skirts up until he brushes the thin leather straps encircling each thigh. Billie's breath hitches in his ear as he traces along the bottom edge of each one. The right holds the final knife, pressed against the outside of her thigh with the tip resting just above her knee. The left holds a small pouch with two glass vials in it. Poison, he assumes. She wouldn't waste time with the sleeping draught. The fine, silk gloves she is wearing won't allow for concealing her wristbow, but if she can get close enough for a quick jab with the needle…

Daud leans back to meet Billie's eyes, though he lets his hands linger beneath her skirts, fingers rubbing idly along the edges of the leather. "You seem to have everything you need."

"I like to be prepared." Billie sets her gloved hands on his arms, holding them in place. "I'll kill him quickly," she promises, looking at him with dark, half-lidded eyes, "and then you can see if I've brought everything back."


	16. Fantasies: BillieDaud

(294 words.)

* * *

The summer months made the Flooded District even more unpleasant than usual, the air turned hot and muggy and stinking of rats and death. The advantages of this new base outweighed the many flaws, but it was certainly something one had to become accustomed to.

Billie had evidently found a way to deal with the heat, at least, stripped down now to her undershirt with her pants cuffed to the knee to make training in this weather bearable. Daud stopped for a moment on the rooftop opposite their makeshift practice room to watch her.

It was always a pleasure to see her in motion, even at half-speed and with a blunted weapon, feigning killing strikes on straw-stuffed targets. Seeing her so bared was a rare treat, though. Like this, he could better appreciate the clean lines of her stances, the shift of hard muscle under sweat-soaked skin, the practiced ease with which she used the Void's powers to augment her already impressive natural skill.

If he approached her now, she would ask him to spar with her. And he would win still, though these days the gap in their abilities was close enough that any match between them became a long and exhausting affair.

He sometimes imagined what it would be like to lose to her, to let her unbalance him and knock him onto his back and follow him to the ground, her knee on his chest, her blade to his throat, her dark, triumphant grin as she waited for him to yield. It was a strangely tantalizing thought.

He turned sharply away from the edge of the roof and shook his head. That would surely be the beginning of the end, the day she believed she stood a chance of killing him.


	17. Canon-divergent AU: Billie and Daud

(277 words.)

* * *

There was a moment of fear when she first heard his voice again, low and rumbling and still so immediately familiar to her even after all the years apart. His words floated up over the sound of the waves and the general talk and clatter of the docks, and she froze in place.

But this was not Dunwall, where he had sent her away with her life and a command never to return. Daud may have been born on this isle, but Karnaca was no more his territory than it was her own. This was level ground for them.

She listened for a few moments while he spoke, bartering for passage with one of the other captains making port here. He was hoping to go north, up the coast toward Bastillian. Not her usual route, but she hadn't taken on any passengers or cargo yet, so she had no real obligations or schedules to stick to.

Billie chewed her lip in thought, then let out a harsh sigh. She'd named her own damn ship after him, even if she had tried to be clever enough to be able to deny it. The painted letters were still shiny and new across the sides. To claim she hadn't hoped to meet him again someday would be such an obvious lie it wasn't worth telling, even to herself.

She made her decision and leaned over the railing of the _Dreadful Wale_ before she could change her mind. "Hey," she called out, and there was Daud looking up at her, a little older and a lot wearier but still achingly familiar. She swallowed hard. "It sounds like you're heading my way."


	18. Sentimentality: Billie (and Daud)

(100 words.)

* * *

The posters showed up a few months after she arrived in Karnaca, Daud's piercing eyes suddenly staring at her again from beneath a detailed list of all his crimes.

She studied one now in the dim light from the streetlamps, taking in the lines and shadows of the portrait, the scar finely etched down the side of the face. It was an unnervingly good likeness.

With a cautious glance over her shoulder, Billie drew her knife from her belt and slipped it under the edge of the paper, carefully ignoring the part of herself that asked why she was bothering.


	19. Shivering: Billie and Daud

(328 words.)

* * *

"You had to run away to fucking _Tyvia_ ," Billie says through chattering teeth, shivering in the corner in her too thin coat.

The automatic protest, that he would hardly call it running away and that he certainly hadn't asked her to follow, hovers on his tongue for a moment before he lets it die there unsaid. Instead he shrugs and turns back to the fire in front of him, prodding at the wood and kindling until the flames blaze and lick out onto the hearth. "You could always sit closer," he says mildly.

Billie stays where she is, frowning. The ease with which they had once interacted is long gone now, and though she was the one to seek him out, she regards him with a level of wariness that he doesn't remember from even their earliest days.

Daud sighs. "It's good to know the years haven't made you any less stubborn, but you've come an awful long way just to freeze to death in my front room."

Her frown deepens into a scowl, but she stands and comes closer, sitting near enough that he can watch her shivering slow and eventually stop without turning his head. She relaxes slightly as she warms, uncrossing her arms and leaning back, and the silence, if still not exactly comfortable, is less strained now than it has been since Billie appeared half-frozen on his doorstop and he stood back without a word to let her in.

"Why did you come all the way out here?" she asks after several long moments.

"To discourage visitors."

She rolls her eyes. It's a look so familiar that he almost smiles.

"I wanted to leave everything behind me for a while, try and forget what we'd done," he admits. Maybe running away wasn't so inaccurate after all.

"Hm, I can understand that," she says with a nod. She turns her head to give him a half-smile. "You really couldn't have done that anywhere warmer, though?"


	20. Something Uniquely Them:Billie(and Daud)

(142 words.)

* * *

She sometimes buys the same cigars he used to smoke, some cheap, Dunwall-made brand that costs twice as much here across the ocean. She lights them up at night, locked away in her own cabin and letting the smoke fill up that small space while she stares at her reflection in the lenses of the old Whaler mask or studies the faded portraits and bounties pinned to the wall. The must and mold of the ship and sea aren't quite the same as the Flooded District's rot, but with the sharp, burning scent of the cigar in her hand, it's almost close enough.

Sometimes it's too close.

She shoves the mask away to the edge of the desk and leans back in her chair, staring at the smoke curling up toward the ceiling instead. She'll spend the money on pipe tobacco next time.


	21. Human Weapons: Daud (and Billie)

(100 words.)

* * *

She was – for too many years, perhaps – the finest weapon in his arsenal. Her body a blade forged by their shared anger, a pistol pointed at their enemy's heart, molded carefully to fit his hand.

He relied on her too heavily, this weapon that was always bound to slip his grip and bite into his flesh.

He feels her absence now most keenly during a fight, when he reaches for his blade and does not hear the distant whisper of her own sliding from its sheath. None of the others are quite so capable of turning his intentions into bloodshed.


	22. In-Universe Fic: Billie and Daud

(262 words.)

* * *

She found the book across the room in a corner, lying haphazardly on its spine with the pages spilling open. The whole ship was admittedly a disaster right now, but she'd been pretty careful with the books, and she didn't remember dropping this one there. It looked suspiciously like it had been thrown.

She crouched down to pick it up, then turned to face Daud, who was pretending to sleep on the cot. She flipped the book over in her hands so the flaking gold of the words _The Knife of Dunwall_ was clearly visible and raised an eyebrow. "Not a fan, I take it?"

Daud opened one eye, then shook his head with a snort. "I can't believe you own a copy of that," he muttered.

"I was curious how it made me look," Billie said with a shrug. "If it makes you feel better, I didn't spend any money on it."

"If you wasted your talents stealing it, I'm even more disappointed." He sat up slowly, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Load of nonsense."

Billie laughed, opening the book and flipping through the pages. "I don't know, they got a couple things pretty right. I think someone might have given an interview." She glanced back at him over the edge of the cover, smiling. "My bets are on Rinaldo. Never could keep his mouth shut."

Daud ran a hand over his face, shaking his head again, and shot her an unamused look through his fingers. "The next time you leave," he warned, "I'm dropping that into the sea."


	23. Loyalty: Billie and Daud

(422 words.

This chapter contains... a tactical contemplation of suicide?)

* * *

The music is absolute agony, rattling her bones and teeth, clouding her mind and cutting off everything that connects her to Daud and the Void and their incredible gifts. It holds her in place so firmly that the ropes binding her wrists to the chair are entirely unnecessary, and about the only conscious movement she can make is to stretch her hand open to find the deadly pin hidden at her fingertip.

She remembers, disturbingly clear through the haze of pain, the Whaler who first showed her how to safely place the poison in the lining of her glove, warning her of what would happen if she was ever caught on the night before her first solo job. "You won't be rescued. The Overseers will kill you if you keep silent, and Daud will hunt you down if you talk," he said. "This is a kinder death than either of those would be."

She hasn't thought of it much since then, always too confident in her own abilities to ever consider capture a real danger, but she has wondered, passingly at first and increasingly often over the last year or so, if she could face off against Daud and survive.

She never imagined this to be the way she might find her answer. The thought of trading his secrets for her escape makes her stomach burn and twist, but against the press of the music in her skull, the feel of her bones near shattering…

Her finger strokes along the edge of the pin, and her lips part.

And all at once, the music stops.

Billie opens her eyes to see the Overseer in front of her gurgling blood from his pierced throat, hands twitching uselessly around the edge of his music box until he slides from Daud's blade to the floor. Daud looks her over briskly, assessing the damage, and then that same weapon, dark red and dripping, carefully cuts away the rope at her wrists, the sharp edge not even grazing her skin.

"Let's go," he says gruffly, as he grabs her by the arm and hauls her to her feet.

She follows on unsteady legs, shaking her head to clear the last of the music's fog. She stares at Daud's back in front of her, frowning as she struggles to understand what has just happened.

 _You won't be rescued._

Billie clenches her fist, pushing the point of the pin safely back into the lining of her glove. She tries not to wonder what choice she was about to make.


	24. Accidental Voyeurism: BillieDaud

(568 words.)

* * *

Billie entered Daud's chambers silently and without knocking, as was often her way, and then stopped immediately short in the doorway, the words to announce her presence dying unspoken on her tongue as she took in the view before her.

Daud stood at the other end of the room with his back to her, hands resting on the washstand in front of him. He was stripped down to his undershirt, and a quick glance around the room showed her his whaling coat hanging from a peg on the wall and his bloodstained button shirt in a heap on the floor. She could also see his blade, already spotless and gleaming, lying across his desk, which explained why he hadn't finished washing up yet.

The day's job had been a messy one, both in the sense that much of their information had been wrong and they'd needed to do a lot of thinking on their feet, and because the target, when they finally cornered him, had jerked unexpectedly on Daud's blade, spraying him and much of the nearby floor with a burst of arterial blood.

They'd dragged themselves home in unhappy moods, and Daud had set Billie to the task of drafting a letter to the ones who had hired them, explaining in pointed detail why the Whalers would be expecting more than the agreed upon sum when it came time for coin to change hands, before going off to clean himself up.

She watched now as he picked up a cloth from the basin and dragged it over his face with both hands, scrubbing at the flecks of dried blood on his skin and letting the water run down his neck and drip off his arms. He pulled the cloth away again with a relieved sigh, tipping his head back for a moment to let the cool air of the room rush over his face. Then he shook himself, dropped the cloth back into the basin, and in one smooth movement, gripped his undershirt by the hem and pulled it over his head to toss it on the floor.

Against her better judgement, Billie continued to stare, watching with some strange enthrallment as he wrung out the cloth and ran it over his chest and arms, across the back of his neck, washing away the blood and grit and sweat of a job nearly gone wrong. Rivulets of water ran down the hard angles of his muscled back, followed along the jagged lines of scar tissue that covered so much of his body.

Daud was not what Billie would call 'handsome', and he was nothing like any of the scant few men who had ever caught her eye. But she'd been drawn to his power from the very moment she first spotted him in the street, and there was something to seeing it so clearly on display like this, not just gifts from the Void and an eye for the kill, but the real, physical strength underneath it all…

She swallowed and shifted her weight back, and it was enough to make the floorboards creak.

Daud turned his head quickly, frowned when he spotted her lingering by the door. "Lurk," he said flatly. "Is there something you need?"

She shook her head and crossed her arms, leaning against the doorjamb with all the casualness she could manage. "Just making sure not too much of that blood was yours."


	25. Hunger Games AU: Billie and Daud

(429 word.)

* * *

Billie fought hard when the Peacekeepers beat her poor, sweet Deirdre to death in the middle of the street. Fought and screamed and scratched and bit until they finally threw her to the ground and kicked her 'til she couldn't stand.

She lived, though. No bullet to the head, just a beating that left her limping for weeks and the memory of Deirdre twitching and gasping her last in the dirt beside her.

When Billie's name gets called at the reaping a few months later, she's not surprised. Can't even bring herself to pretend otherwise, to summon any greater despair out of the deep, black grief that's already consumed so much of her, as they pull her from the crowd and onto the stage.

She hasn't been much attached to her own life for some time anyway.

Her miserable daze lasts through the entire ceremony, through the Peacekeepers herding her away and onto the train, through most of the day of travel until one of the old victors corners her just inside the dining car and grabs her by the chin, startling some of that forgotten fighting instinct out of her for a brief moment. But his gloved fingers hold tight, keeping her still and tipping her head back until she's forced to look up at him.

She's seen a few clips from Daud's Games during the highlight replays over the years, watched him win with quick hands and silent feet and ruthlessly efficient use of the simple blade he'd taken from the Cornucopia. At the end of it all, he'd been dripping red, as much from his opponents as from the large, oozing wound covering nearly half his face. Not even Capitol medicine could remove every bit of that scar.

Some folks say he'd lost the eye as well and the Capitol had given him a new one, say it lets him see things no one else can see. Billie had always dismissed that as nonsense until now, with that piercing eye inches from her own, staring into her like it can see every secret she's ever had. Daud tilts her head to one side and then the other, looking her over.

"You go into that arena like you're already dead inside, and you'll never live long enough to make them pay," he warns her, his voice low and harsh. "Do what I say, kill and survive in there, and I'll give you something to live for at the other end."

The anger welling in her chest feels almost like relief.

She meets his unsettling stare and nods.


	26. Rooftop Meetings: Billie and Daud

(480 words.)

* * *

Billie found him not aboard her ship but high above it, standing on the slanted roof of one of the long-abandoned buildings nearby.

She considered this with a frown and crossed arms. It was much harder for her to make those kinds of climbs without any of Daud's shared powers, and he knew this. He would also know that she was damned stubborn, and he would have to try a lot harder than that if he had wanted to avoid talking with her. She found her grip on a few protruding corner bricks and began to haul herself up.

"This is yours?" he asked as she reached the top, gesturing out toward the sea where the _Dreadful Wale_ sat, half-docked and half-beached.

It was a pointless question – she'd told him where to go, and her ship was the only one anywhere near here – but she nodded anyway. "That's it," she added briefly, still catching her breath from the climb.

"Interesting name," he said. His tone suggested that he had already done the necessary rearranging of letters to work out the real meaning there.

She shrugged. "Felt right at the time." She stood up and tilted her head as she observed the _Wale_ from this new angle. It didn't look so bad from up here. All the cracks and leaks were far and hidden away. "She won't go far, but she's got some life in her yet. Sturdy enough to do what we need, at least for a while."

"A fitting name, indeed," he said drily.

"Daud…"

He shook his head before she could say anything more. He eased his way to the edge of the roof and sat down, slowly and carefully lowering himself, sighing as he folded each aching limb.

It was strange to finally see him so worn down. She was older now than he'd been when they first met and was already so tired so much of the time. She often found herself wondering how he'd managed for so long, only ever slowing when the guilt of the Empress's death had managed to eat away at him.

"You can't beat Serkonos for sunsets," he said suddenly, staring out into the purple-hued dusk as it settled over the ocean. "I never appreciated that as a boy. Missed this one sitting in that cage, but hopefully I'll see a few more before this ends."

Billie could say nothing to that. She sat down next to him, close as she dared, and watched as the purples melted into blues and then blacks, until the dim lights from the _Dreadful Wale_ reflecting on the water were all that could be seen. Then she sighed and nudged his shoulder with her own. "Come on, old man," she said. "You need some rest, and then I can tell you how stupid this plan of yours is."

He laughed. "I always appreciate your input."


	27. Older Partner Being a Virgin: BillieDaud

(356 words.)

* * *

"Honestly, never?"

"No," he answers, and there's a hint of irritation in his voice that tells her she's pushed the questioning a bit too far.

It surprises her, though. Daud may not be a particularly attractive man, at least by the usual standards, but he has a way of drawing people in and commanding attention. She doesn't doubt he's had offers. She's seen strangers in the streets slow their steps and turn to watch as he passed by, even before his face was adorning every other wanted poster in the city. Billie did it herself, that first night, dropped what she was doing to trail after him across a few miles of rooftops and light posts from just a glimpse of him at his work.

And now she's here, half-undressed in his bed, watching that alluring confidence of his waver, however slightly, for the first time. It stirs something within her, low and hot, that she can't quite name.

She slips in closer to him, hands on his chest, knee between his legs, and she likes the way his own hands feel when they come to rest, after a moment of uncertainty, at the top of her hips. Strong and steady as always but slow to move, fingers tracing tentatively over lines of bone and muscle.

More than that, she realizes as she leans in even closer and presses her knee against him, watching as his eyes shut suddenly, hearing him suck in a sharp breath. She likes the whole sensation of _this_ , the strange, half-drunk sense of power of being his first. She'll be the only one in all his years to see him like this, to know the feel of him under her hands, between her thighs, deep inside of her, to watch him come apart at her touch.

Billie has often imagined what it would be like to have Daud at her mercy, idle fantasies of standing above him with her blade in hand, the tip of it under his chin, forcing him to look up at her.

She rests her hand at his throat and thinks this might be just as good.


	28. Courting Gifts: BillieDaud

(225 words.)

* * *

Billie takes every bonecharm she finds, stitching the useful ones into the lining of her coat, where their subtle, singing powers can seep into her, and selling everything else in the back markets for heavy handfuls of coin. They have clear value; it's an easy choice to make, grabbing charms over gold and jewels.

Runes, though…

She can feel the touch of the Void on them, a softer, stranger song than the bonecharms sing, but she gains nothing but unease and restless dreams by holding onto them. They fetch a lower price, too, a hard sell to all but the most devoutly heretical.

But they hold value to Daud. She's seen him carefully storing them away in a trunk in his rooms, even more carefully than he stashes coin or good weapons.

Her target today has many riches and finery but also a hidden room behind a dark curtain, shards of bone and splashes of oil and ink littering the floor around the worktable where the new rune hums with skull-rattling magic.

Billie thinks of the flicker of a smile across Daud's face, the pleased sound he makes at the back of his throat whenever they find one resting at the base of a haphazard shrine, and she empties one pocket of its gold and pearls to slip the useless hunk of whalebone in instead.


	29. Inappropriate Teaching: Billie and Daud

(100 words.)

* * *

An early lesson:

She stands still in front of him, feet apart, arms at her sides, and he runs rough fingers over her neck, down her wrists, lightly across the edges of her thighs, showing her all the places a man will bleed until he dies if she cuts just right.

 _Do you understand?_ he asks.

She swallows hard, throat bobbing under his touch, and nods.

Later he puts a blade in her shaking hand and stands her in front of a captured Overseer, cuts the rope around his wrists and tells her to show him what she has learned.


	30. Goatfarming Villains: Billie and Daud

(100 words.)

* * *

It wasn't that Billie hadn't expected him to find some quiet existence once he left Dunwall. She'd always hoped he had, after his disappearance.

Still…

"Why goats?" she asked.

"They make decent coin and keep people off your property," Daud answered with a shrug. He dumped a bucket of feed into the goats' trough and absently shooed away one chewing at his coat.

Billie reached down to try and pat the nearest animal on the head and nearly lost her fingers for the effort.

Daud laughed as she snatched her hand away. "And it's not that different from herding assassins."


	31. Age-swapped OTPs: Billie and Daud

(394 words.)

* * *

The job goes well and the coin comes in clean and easy, so Billie claps him on the back and pours out a generous amount of whiskey into two tumblers to celebrate, shoves one into his hands before he can protest.

Daud still winces a little as he knocks back the drink, not quite accustomed to that burn down his throat, and Billie smirks to see the quick shudder pass over his face.

He holds the glass in his left hand, the mark of the Outsider clearly visible as he lowers it again, and her smile flickers for a moment. She takes her own drink and sits down at her table, kicks the other chair out toward him. "Stay a while," she says. "You've earned the rest of the night off."

His eyebrows lift in surprise at the invitation – and it is a good thing they wear masks while they work, as she has yet to train those tells out of him – but he sits obediently. He doesn't quite keep the grimace from his face as she pours more whiskey, but he gamely takes another, slower drink after she clinks her glass against his.

She waits until the tumbler is empty again before she gestures to his hand and asks, "You ever going to tell me how you managed to earn that thing?"

He covers the mark with his other hand quickly, almost self-conscious more than defensive. "No," he says, frowning. "Not tonight, anyway."

Anger flashes suddenly through Billie's heart, and an old desire to just cut the whole damned hand off and see if she can figure it out from there comes surging back through her thoughts. He hardly even knew what to do with that incredible power when she found him, a half-starved street kid stumbling along the rooftops of her gang's base, dead-eyed and hopeless and holding a fury at the world so deep and vast it would've driven men twice his age mad. He would have been dead without her, no matter how _interesting_ the Outsider happened to find him.

Daud's marked hand stretches across the table until his fingers brush against hers, and the touch jolts her from her thoughts with the way that it burns. The black lines of the strange symbol flare to bright white.

"But I think I can share what he's given me with you."


	32. They Remind You of Someone Else: Daud

(782 words. Full prompt is "sleeping with someone because they remind you of someone else", so this is Daud/OFC but also kind Daud/Billie.)

* * *

"This one is on me," the serving girl says as she holds out his drink to him, waving off his efforts to shuffle through his meagre handful of coins for the payment. She leans in close as she does so, smiling with half-lidded eyes and a tilt of her head.

It is an obvious look, but he has to delve far back into memories from his youth to recognize the meaning implied there, and it startles him when he does. This woman does not know his face or his crimes, he realizes, does not see him for the killer he is. He is just a man drinking alone who caught her eye for some reason. Has he finally gone far enough, kept his head down long enough, to escape the reputation he was once so proud to have earned? The thought is strangely elating, even over the hint of bitter disappointment at the back of his throat.

He has to dig back even further to remember how to respond to such a gesture, to muster up a smile as he thanks her and to let his fingers brush over hers as he takes the glass.

The woman grins and begins clearing away empty plates from the recently vacated table near his, keeping herself half-turned to face him as she does. "You look like you've been travelling," she says. "Did you get a room here for the night?"

He takes a long drink before he decides how to answer her, and he uses the time to try and look at her through the eyes of what she sees him as, an ordinary traveler drinking at her inn. His first inclination is to lie and say no, let it die off there, but…

But she is quite pretty, in the sea and salt-roughened way of most people living in these small port towns. Dark skin and dark eyes, rare up here, and younger than him but not so young as to make him balk at the idea. There is something old and knowing to the lines of her face, but the curve of her lips seems easy and genuine, like she's seen much of the worst this world has to offer and still hasn't quite let it beat her down. It is a look he admires, has admired before.

The familiarity there isn't something he wishes to consider too deeply, but it is enough, along with the novelty of having such an option, to make him say, "Yes," and then, after a pause, "The room at the end of the hall."

"A man who likes his quiet?"

He shrugs and drains the last of his drink. "Only sometimes."

The brush of hands is much more deliberate and lingering this time, as she takes his empty glass and piles it in with the rest of the dishes. "I'll come by later," she says, "see if you want anything else."

"All right."

He watches for a while as she goes about her work. She smiles freely as she moves around the room but does not linger with anyone else in quite the same way. As the tables begin to empty of their patrons, he stands up to leave as well, climbs the stairs and heads to his rented room at the end of the hall.

It is a fight against every instinct he has to leave the door unlocked, to turn his back and stand at the open window and watch the lights flickering over the empty streets until he hears the handle turn. He glances over as the door clicks shut again and then reaches out to quietly pull the window closed as well.

He does not know this woman's name, he realizes as he walks toward her, but she hasn't asked for his either. That's probably for the best, for a number of reasons, though he knows it will make it easier for another name to flit through his mind and try to fill the blank.

She meets him halfway across the room. She lays her hand on his cheek and smiles, and he reaches up to close his fingers around her wrist before she can touch his scar.

He feels suddenly that he should warn her off somehow, tell her who he is and what he has done, tell her that he has killed more people than she has probably ever met in her entire life spent in this tiny seaside town. Instead he swallows and says, "It's been a while for me."

The woman laughs, a sound much too similar to the one in his memories. "Well, don't I feel special, then?"

He closes his eyes and lets her pull him close.


	33. AccidentalBabyAcquisition: BillieandDaud

(215 words. It's actually "accidental street urchin acquisition", but close enough.)

* * *

"Kid's still following us," Billie said, glancing briefly over her shoulder.

Daud shrugged, not even pausing in his stride. "You gave him money. Might as well have fed scraps to a stray wolfhound."

"I gave him a measly few coins after I nearly broke his arm for trying to pickpocket me first. I didn't think that would endear me enough to earn a tagalong."

"You could always start a gang," Daud said drily. "That's what I did when street kids started following me."

She gave him a shove, but he barely even stumbled, which made it less than satisfying.

Another glance back saw the kid stop in his tracks and take a sudden interest in the fruit stall they'd just passed. He had decent instincts for tailing, and his quick hands might have even found their prize if it had been someone else's pockets, but if he didn't learn to pick his targets better, he was going to wind up floating face down in the river.

With a heavy sigh, Billie turned sharply around. "Can at least teach him enough not to get gutted in an alley," she muttered to herself as she headed for the kid, who immediately froze in place at her approach.

She ignored the sound of Daud laughing quietly behind her.


	34. Unusual Soulmates: BillieDaud-ish

(363 words. Billie/Daud-ish but also Billie/Deirdre.

Further prompted by the comment "a small rat comes and ties a red cord around your wrist". Because if anywhere is going to have rat-based soulmate myths, it's definitely Dunwall.)

* * *

A rat bit Billie on the wrist when she was little, hard enough to bleed and puff up red and angry and leave behind a scar when the fever finally faded away.

In the slums, they used to say rats walked in the Void and could see things invisible to all other creatures, that they drew the important connections between people, tied the threads that pulled one soul to another.

Even as a kid she had trouble believing that one. It was only a story, one for tired, desperate parents to quiet their crying children. She doubted if anyone ever had to explain to wealthy brats why it wasn't so terrible that rats and fleas chewed them up while they slept.

But Deirdre had always liked the idea, even though their scars didn't match like they were meant to. Hers was a notch in the ear gouged out by tiny teeth, and she said the rats must have known how much she would love hearing her Billie's sweet voice to connect them that way instead.

Blood poured from Deirdre's ears when she died.

Billie always read her letters out loud before she dropped them in the river, just in case there truly was a rat scurrying through the Void to bring her words to Deirdre's spirit.

With the gloves he always wore, it took her some time to notice Daud's scar, an old bite wound in damn near the same place as her own. Too ridiculous to even mention once she did, and the plague soon stopped any talk of rats bringing anything other than death. But smuggled below decks on the last ship out of Dunwall, anger fading as the guilt lingered on, Billie rubbed her wrist and wondered if they told the same stories to kids getting torn up in the slums across Serkonos, wondered if his had been as painful as hers at the time.

She should have known it could never have been anyone sweet as Deirdre for her. Something that burned and bled like that, nearly killed her before she grit her teeth and pulled through it stronger, could only have been connecting her to someone like Daud.


	35. Disgruntled Deaged Adult:Billie and Daud

(155 words.

I don't know what happened, but it's probably the Outsider's fault.)

* * *

Billie stood in the doorway with her arms crossed and eyebrows raised, staring across the room with some combination of concern and deep amusement.

She had seen a lot living in this city, heard a hundred whales singing in the harbor under moonlight, even glimpsed into the Void itself, but Daud as a young man had to be one of the strangest things she'd ever experienced. It was just odd and nearly unnerving, seeing his familiar scowl creasing a face free of scars and lines, hearing his words in a voice so smooth and ungravelled. Even the way he walked was slightly changed, old, lingering injuries no longer bothering him. Or not bothering him yet, she supposed.

"I'm _sure_ you have something better to do, Lurk," Daud snapped, looking up from his work to shoot a glare in her direction.

She rolled her eyes as she left the room. Maybe not that much had changed.


	36. Bondage: BillieDaud

(353 words.

Probably rated M.)

* * *

She can feel his pulse quicken as she winds the rope around his wrists, a rapid rush of blood beneath her fingertips, and it sends a sudden thrill through her.

It isn't fear, she knows. There is very little in this world that Daud is afraid of, and Billie has never merited a place on that list, much as she likes the idea. And this is no real threat to him anyway. There's nothing she could do short of cutting off his marked hand that would truly hold him down, and she's not certain even that would work.

But it's an uneasiness she has never seen from him, clear discomfort and uncertainty over this small loss of power and control, willingly handed over to her, at war with a desire in his eyes that she has also never seen.

It makes her want to push, to drag out every bit of this rare submission that he allows her, to take all she can. But there is trust running under all this, real and delicate and built up slow over years, and she knows she could shatter it if she does this wrong, lose any chance at anything like this again.

Still, she indulges herself for a moment, lets her nails scrape their way down his arms and over his chest and stomach, feeling hard, tense muscle tremble with the effort of keeping still under her touch. She slips farther down and grinds the heel of her hand against his cock, already straining obviously against the front of his trousers, and enjoys the sharp hitch of his breath, the clenching of his hands held fast above his head.

Then she makes herself let go and lean back. "If you've changed your mind…"

"No," he says, quick and firm despite an even harsher than usual rasp to his voice. He has to swallow to wet his tongue after answering, but he does not take the word back.

Billie rises onto her knees and reaches again for his bound wrists, holding herself above him as she leans back in. "Good," she says, grinning down at him.


	37. Murderous Teenage Girls: Billie and Daud

(100 words.)

* * *

Rumor held that Radanis Abele died slow and in agony, gasping in the mud while his brother crouched over him and screamed his grief and fury.

An impressive feat for its violence if not its skill. Few of Daud's Whalers can claim so noble a corpse as their first kill.

Surviving the hunt that followed is even more impressive.

He puts a knife in the girl's hand and teaches her to do it better, quicker, cleaner.

Her second kill is done in seconds, in silence, and for the first time since Daud found her wandering his halls, Billie Lurk smiles.


	38. Smoking: Billie and Daud

(200 words.)

* * *

He reached for the cigar box after her, but she remembered him coughing blood across the back of his hand not an hour before, and she kept her hand over the lid with a frown. "Sure that won't make anything worse?" she asked.

Daud rolled his eyes. "That's not what's killing me."

"I think it is killing you, just slower than some other things."

He looked pointedly at the lit cigar held between her own fingers.

Billie shrugged. There were other things killing her faster, too. "I'll worry about it when I start sounding like you."

She saw Daud scowl at her, and then the world seemed to stutter, like she'd blinked a moment too long and missed some little movements around her. The cigar was gone from her hand and held now between Daud's teeth. Its smoke was still drifting above her own head.

She laughed in disbelief, too amused to be annoyed. "You used to get so pissed at us if we used our powers for stupid shit like that."

"I'm dying," he said with a shrug, almost managing to hide his satisfied smile.

Billie shook her head. "Fine. I'll let an old man have his last indulgence."


	39. Erotic Dreams About Murder: BillieDaud

(223 words.)

* * *

She didn't feature much in her own dark dreams at first, just a distant figure watching from a rooftop or at the narrow mouth of an alleyway, leaning in eagerly as the blade plunged in and slid back out wet and red. The body fell and the blood pooled, and Billie's heartbeat quickened to see it all.

Not from fear. There had never been fear when she watched him kill.

In time, the details shifted. Daud's eyes caught her own in the moment of death, held them as Billie drew closer and the body cooled on the ground between their feet. Sometimes her hand joined his on the hilt, and they drove the blade forward as one. She felt his heart against her back, racing with her own.

When last she dreamed it, the weapon was in her hands alone, the blade shoved through Daud's chest as deep as she could make it go. His eyes blazed as he reached out to touch her face, streaking warm blood across her cheeks with a final, gentle caress. She could feel the last beats of his heart trembling along the metal to her fingertips.

Billie woke with a sharp breath, hands clenched tight around the sheets. Guilt gnawed vaguely at the back of her mind, but something more pressing had settled white-hot between her legs.


End file.
